American Dreams Vinyl, CD & Tape 37 Items

In Horror Vacui, Paris-based, Iran-born 9T Antiope use a sparse palette of octave mandolin, violin and octave violin, synthesizer and vocals, to build a dynamic world that seems to exist outside of the bounds of time and place. Cinematic, spare, heavy, gossamer, and informed by the band’s work as sound designers and composers for theatre, film and performance art, Horror Vacui is a concept album that explores what sounds have been, what they’ll become, and the nature of memory, dementia and decay. As 9T Antiope attempt to reconcile different worlds, they create the sound of arriving in a new world all your own.

Experimental musician Claire Rousay and visual artist Dani Toral have been in each others’ orbit since young adulthood in San Antonio, but it took a decade for them to find A Softer Focus. Before Rousay had put her compositional gray matter to task for the album’s music, she knew she wanted to work with Toral- being familiar with her past work centering her Mexican heritage. Toral’s vibrant color palette and reinterpretations of comfort in oneself and the natural, vegetative world connected easily with her explorations in communication and intimacy. Historically, Rousay primarily operated in non-melodic experimental music, sculpting compositions from obsessive field recordings, inserting voice-to-text, percussion played via text message sounds, conversations, and daily life. By contrast, the six-song collection and collaborative project A Softer Focus is lush and almost entirely melodic, even veering into pop at a couple points.

Though Rousay created the album’s recordings, Toral created the artwork and visual narrative for the album - the recurring floral motifs and designs, the photography, the video work, and the ceramic whistles that accompany a special edition of the vinyl record. She also assisted in crafting the linguistic framework, assisting with song titles, and coming up with the name of the album - “A Softer Focus” became the album’s central motif, alluding to the meditative or recollective-dream state of creating. Toral, being primarily a painter and ceramicist, took on this challenge of working digitally to create a visual language accompanying the music. She wanted to explore the feelings of present familiarity she felt with Rousay, through warm light and glow while mimicking the flow of the music using her organic soft shapes melding together and creating a portal-like entry to the album. Fittingly, the songs gently amble from one to the next, creating a syrupy, hypnagogic narrative that uses string sections, field recordings, and vocals to touch upon love, friendship, endurance, and transcendence - sounding like what living inside a brain must feel like, oscillating on how far to let its guest in.

Songs like “Peak Chroma” and “Stoned Gesture” are the closest Rousay’s gotten to pop, and are signposts of her growing compositional prowess. It’s on the third track “Peak Chroma” that the first and most wonderful surprise of A Softer Focus arises. The song begins with an airy drone that cuts out right as Rousay’s tastefully autotuned voice emerges alongside cello from Chicago musician Lia Kohl. “Stoned Gesture” also boasts autotuned vocals, though it is a more overtly melancholy composition, perhaps even dirge-like while Rousay brings in field recordings of percussive fireworks that dart around another of clinking ice in a glass.

A Softer Focus is an exciting next step for both Rousay’s compositional practice and Toral’s visual work, showcasing both artists venturing into new territories, and coming out the other side with strengthened friendship and impactful creation. It’s a testament to their trust, playfulness, and candor that we’re allowed to come along for the ride.

Devon Welsh roars back with a powerful new album. Recorded at Welsh’ home in rural Wisconsin, Come With Me If You Want To Live has all the immediacy of his past work, chock-full of grand slam choruses, and slam dunk singing. The production is tight, spare and cinematic, in the classic pop (or Majical Cloudz) mold. “I wanna grow and I will change,” Welsh sings. Here’s proof. It’s his sharpest solo statement to date, his first album since 2019’s True Love, and his first widely distributed solo LP.

Marvin Tate's D-Settlement were Chicago's best-kept secret: a trailblazing, diverse band mixing R&B, soul, punk and funk with biting wit and political commentary. Led by Marvin Tate - a poet, artist, playwright and raconteur who wore pipe cleaners in his hair - and backed up by a dynamic cast of characters, their concerts were the stuff of legend. They stole the show from acts like Antibalas and Bernie Worrell. They addressed transgender rights, gentrification and gun violence before they were trendy. But if you wanted to hear their music, you were out of luck. Until now. American Dreams Records presents Marvin Tate's D-Settlement: a deluxe 4xLP/3xCD box set, designed by Field of Grass (Numero Group, Paradise of Bachelors), collecting their three albums with an oral history of the band. If you like Angel Bat Dawid, Theaster Gates, avery r. young - here's the blueprint.

“This album is a snapshot of my early-to-mid twenties — formative, sometimes confusing years.” That’s Chicago singer-songwriter Claudia Ferme, AKA Claude, on her debut album a lot’s gonna change. For years she’s tinkered away, self-releasing a 12” EP titled Enactor in 2021, and playing shows across the city. Her first full-length has been a long time in the making, with sketches of ditties happening as early as 2017. Since then, she’s refined her craft - words, melodies, and sound - crystallizing in this collection, buttressed by Windy City Wunderkind Michael Mac’s (Tasha, Devin Shaffer, Mia Joy) woozy, lush production. It’s an evocative, relatable assemblage, detailing the peaks and pitfalls of early adult life, all the while maintaining a sense of humor, a bit of hope, and piles of earworms.

Devon Welsh roars back with a powerful new album. Recorded at Welsh’ home in rural Wisconsin, Come With Me If You Want To Live has all the immediacy of his past work, chock-full of grand slam choruses, and slam dunk singing. The production is tight, spare and cinematic, in the classic pop (or Majical Cloudz) mold. “I wanna grow and I will change,” Welsh sings. Here’s proof. It’s his sharpest solo statement to date, his first album since 2019’s True Love, and his first widely distributed solo LP.

Over the past decade, Siavash Amini’s compelling electronic music has quietly garnered praise from Pitchfork, The Guardian and AllMusic. From his home base in Tehran, Iran, Amini has collaborated with artists like Rafael Anton Irisarri and 9T Antiope, and regularly uses literature, film, mysticism, and medieval Iranian culture as musical launchpads. Amini’s new album, Eremos, illustrates a passage from Avicenna, the preeminent philosopher and physician of the Islamic Golden Age: one can move out of darkness, he writes, by confronting the darkness within. The results are - even for Amini - uniquely immersive, cinematic and moving: a landmark.